[nosuchthing]

The illusion of authenticity, the pervasiveness and ubiquitous of mobile phone app usage, and participation in the illusion of the spectacle and camouflaged theatrics of a contrived reality.

Teens can understand magazines have a known aspect of theatrics, whereas the assumption is that instagram is reality and like a Pavlovian dog you must present your life in such a way to gather bonus points from other internet users.

[dingaling]

I was recently introduced to Instagram by other 'serious' photographers and they have a wholly different use-case. No selfies or look-at-my-dinner but instead a sort of fast-paced challenge showcase e.g. today might be Sunsets and tomorrow Waves.

It's a way of building reputation , such as how programmers use Github, but because of Instagrams's resizing and compression of photos it's only an interest-generator; the full experience is on Flickr or 500px or whatever. But apparently it's the most lucrative channel for picking-up paid work.